Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the extraction of high-concentration plasma from whole blood, and more particularly to a device and method of extracting high-concentration plasma from whole blood by passing plasma, separated and collected from whole blood, through a membrane filter.
Description of the Prior Art
Generally, whole blood is largely divided into blood corpuscles and plasma. Herein, the blood corpuscles include red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, and the plasma includes mainly water and contains blood coagulation factors and electrolytes.
More specifically, plasma has a water content of 91%, a protein content of 7%, a fat content of 1% and an inorganic ion content of 0.9%. Herein, the protein in plasma can be separated into albumin and globulin using the difference in solubility in ammonium sulfate and consists of a mixture of several proteins. Albumin accounts for about 55% of plasma protein and plays an important role in the supply of protein and the maintenance of colloidal osmotic pressure. Further, globulin accounts for about 38% of plasma protein and can be classified into three kinds: α, β and γ globulins. α-globulin contains lipoprotein and glycoprotein and is used to deliver vitamins and hormones, and β-globulin is used to deliver prothrombin, plasma thromboplastin, iron and copper, and γ-globulin mainly contains immune antibodies.
Plasma that plays an important role in blood as described above can supply nutrients to the human body while inhibiting harmful substances.
As shown in FIG. 1, whole blood (Wb) is centrifuged into a red blood cell (RBC) layer, a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) layer and a platelet-poor plasma (PPP) layer, and the platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and the platelet-poor plasma (PPP) are collected. For example, about 2.5 ml of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and about 2.5 ml of platelet-poor plasma (PPP) can be obtained from 10 ml of whole blood. Herein, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been used in various treatment and beauty fields, including wound healing in implant placement including sinus elevation, heart surgery, plastic operation, dermatology and the like. Plate-poor plasma (PPP), separated and collected from whole blood (Wb), contains small amounts of platelet and protein. This platelet-poor plasma (PPP) is used as a massage material after platelet-poor plasma (PRP) therapy or is disposed of as waste. In addition, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) prepared by conventional methods contains a high concentration of platelet, but has a shortcoming in that the concentration of plasma therein is only two times higher than that in whole blood. Thus, there is a need to concentrate plasma in addition to platelet, except for red blood cells among the components of whole blood. For this purpose, in the prior art, a method of either extracting plasma from platelet-poor plasma (PPP) by a filtration process or concentrating only plasma by a concentration process was used.
However, platelet-rich plasma extracted from platelet-poor plasma (PPP) has a problem in that it has a low concentration of platelet. In addition, the prior art devices and methods for obtaining high-concentration plasma containing low-concentration platelet have a problem of low efficiency.